Yes, but developing a better horse has a low likelihood of success and a relatively long time horizon. There are some arms race dynamics here in that as long as no one else is trying to develop a better horse, you probably are better off just not trying to either.

> what if there's an even better horse out there

Doesn't matter, such things threaten the horse investor lock in economics.

Many years past, an early bit of software from my student days was a side project making an easy to use database system for a horse stud farm, high status stallions being put to mares with the feed, vet visits, results, etc. all logged.

Horse racing is pretty much all about pedigree - without the lineage horses are considered valueless by the industry - super fast back country waler crosses might be acceptable for a four mile charge across open ground onto machine gun nests .. but w/out that pedigree <shrug> no Lord or up and coming billionaire is going to syndicate that horse for racing.

I imagine Polo to be much the same, in the rich set. Probably more open and accepting out on the steppes knocking about the heads of the vanquished.

There’s commodities and then R&D. Ignoring every other moral consideration, this horse cloning has turned a biological asset into a (relative)commodity, and if people were looking for better horses they’d stick to the randomized mutation of regular breeding which has that built in as a feature.

This isn’t even the only instance of this technique. You can look at the Argentinian president Milei who hired a company to provide him with consistent advisors in the form of cloned dogs he talks with through a mystic[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conan_(Javier_Milei%27s_dog)

And i thought it was about those polo shirts and replicas of the horse logo on the “fake” t-shirts.

Though we are not yet competitive in the Argentinian Polo clone wars, we are making significant progress - https://www.satyress.com/

Me too, I guess I don’t think of “replica” and “clone” as synonymous in the context of animals.

That'd be alot more ethical than the current horse racing industry if it were the case.

Humans riding racing robots id watch, but not horse racing.

Don't twin studies mostly show this wouldn't be the case?

I am not sure if the Einsteins you clone would do what you want. Maybe they will want to be influencers on short video platforms.

I would watch him carefully if he grew a goatee or something.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror,_Mirror_(Star_Trek:_The...

You are such an optimist. We are more likely to get clones of athletes, and clones of billionaires for the organ donation options.

I doubt people like Jonas Salk would accept being cloned if they could help it

Nope, that's what relativistic slugs are for

I am 100% dead serious when i say I think there is at least a 50% chance that lebron is a genetically modified human being and in turn, has no father.

I am dead serious. I believe lebron was grown in a test tube and then artificially implanted into gloria james and carried to term. no human being should possess his combination of size, strength and athleticism. AND to book it all out, he's very intelligent too. (besides the decision) remember how much poise he had just coming into the league at 18 years old? it's un-natural. how often have TV analysts described him as a "freak of nature" .....maybe it's truer than we know.

I am serious. we all know (and I swear I am not saying this to be insulting or mean) that lebron's mom was a crack whore (is drug addicted prostitute better?) it's just a fact, it happened. I am NOT saying this to be mean, in fact I am a heroin addict and know a few woman who have sold themselves for dope, it happens. they are not bad people.

and the government has a history of using prostitutes and impoverished people in "experiments." read about MK-ULTRA. it happened. the CIA used to have prostitutes slip LSD to johns and then the agents would watch what happened thru 2-way mirrors. the government helped start and continue the crack epidemic of the 80s.

I believe that lebron was a precursor experiment to create super soldiers. something where they were just like "well let's test it out on some poor people that no one will notice and see if we can get any results before we sink more billions into this."

it's not all that crazy. you don't think the government has interest in creating genetically modified super human soldiers? we know for a FACT it does. it's been documented. you don't think russia or china has interest in such a thing? you know they do. and anything russia or china is or would be doing we are doing. to do it first and do it better.

he's some kind of experiment that they just monitored from a distance and let keep growing. and i mean this was probably initially started with just a few people who believed it could be done and that's why it started small and covert using regular civilians. until they could show the results to the higher ups and say "look at this, you don't wanna fund this on a larger scale?"

and where else would such a person end up besides in a professional sports league?

I think there is probably some secret base(s) out there that are now filled with people like lebron, younger than him probably. if they couldn't see how well the experiment worked until he was about 16-18 years old (he was pretty much a full grown man at 16 and could have came off the bench for any NBA team if not started) than maybe there are a bunch of 9-15 year old super humans like lebron (not copies of him but given the same genetic boost that he was) eating chow in some secret barracks right now.....

until someone comes forth and the DNA test shows him to be his father (and a bunch have come forward and been shown not to be) than I will believe this is AT LEAST possible..

cloned horses are good at competitive sailing also?!?

That is where many of the nazi war doctors who escaped prosecution ended up…